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from history and among the civilized races, there is one further 
appeal to be made, though one of less importance. It is to 
all that we also can discover from the traditions of the various 
savage races. The result of that appeal I must be content 
to state in little more than a sentence from the paper already 
quoted ; namely, “ That among all savage races (except perhaps 
the very lowest of the low, from whom we can gather nothing), 
there are traces, more or less, of an anterior civilization, or 
previous superiority of condition, that testifies to their being 
now in a literally degraded state. .Even the poetical legends 
of the Yiti Islanders, and the superstitious traditions of the 
Negroes, testify to something in their ancestors superior to 
themselves.” In illustration of this, I quote from an inde- 
pendent source the following : — “ The islands of the Pacific, 
under a general appearance of primeval simplicity, present 
here and there many remarkable evidences of a former 
civilization, as well as of a degree of connection between the 
several populations, which seems inconsistent with their pre- 
sent isolation.”* I ought here perhaps also to observe inci- 
dentally, that among almost all the savage races when first 
discovered, the traditions connected with their corrupt forms 
of religion are found to have something about serpents, and 
trees, and woman. 
So that here again the verdict of facts is still in favour of 
the priority of civilization, and a proof that the savage races 
have degenerated from a higher grade. On this point, too, I 
may refer to the Bosjesmen, as a known instance of the growth 
of a, distinctive savage race within a few generations. Without 
going further in go details as regards the savage races, I venture 
to claim to have pretty well established my thesis, and proved 
that the religious theory may now also be called with propriety 
the Historical Theory. J 
Since the foregoing was written, additional testimony of a 
valuable kind has come under my notice, and to this I beg 
leave very briefly to allude. At the last meeting of the 
Ethnological Society, held only on Tuesday, 10th Jul y , a paper 
was read by the distinguished African traveller Mr. S. W. Baker, 
m , ^T^e S ave an interesting account of the various tribes 
of the White Nile Basin. One of these tribes (the Kytch tribe), ' 
he says, is “ hardly a remove above the chimpanzee, except 
(a most important exception) in the power of speech. They live 
m a marshy district and are wretched skeletons.” Most of these 
tribes, it seems, know how to work in metals. But in one in-the 
* Principles of Mythonomy, by Mr. Luke Burke, p. 51 . 
P 
